Cities and towns are loci of population and production. In 2010, 80.7 percent of the United States population resided in urban areas, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that in 2011, 90.1 percent of GDP was produced in metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), emphasizing that urban...

This paper studies the effect of hospital ownership on treatment rates allowing for spatial correlation among hospitals. Competition among hospitals and knowledge spillovers generate significant externalities which we try to capture using the spatial Durbin model. Using a panel of 2342 hospitals...

This paper focuses on the estimation and predictive performance of several estimators for the time-space dynamic panel data model with Spatial Moving Average Random Effects (SMA-RE) structure of the disturbances. A dynamic spatial Generalized Moments (GM) estimator is proposed which combines the...

This paper proposes maximum likelihood estimators for panel seemingly unrelated regressions with both spatial lag and spatial error components. We study the general case where spatial effects are incorporated via spatial errors terms and via a spatial lag dependent variable and where the...

This paper provides new evidence on the wage gap between informal and formal salary workers in South Africa, Brazil and Mexico. We use rich datasets that allow us to define informality in a relatively comparable fashion across countries. We compute precise wage differentials by accounting for...

The informal sector plays an important role in the functioning of labor markets in emerging economies. To characterize better this highly heterogeneous sector, we conduct a distributional analysis of the earnings gap between informal and formal employment in Brazil, Mexico and South Africa,...

This paper analyses the relationship between social networks and the job search behaviour of individuals. Networking is not only based on friends and relatives but also on neighbourhood. The geographic closeness is associated to social interactions. Individuals who are in physical and social...

In this paper, we derive a semiparametric estimation procedure for the sample selection model when some covariates are endogenous. Our approach is to augment the main equation of interest with a control function which accounts for sample selectivity as well as endogeneity of covariates. In...

Using quantile regression and a rich cross section data set for German manufacturing plants this paper documents that the impact of plant characteristics on export activities varies along the conditional size distribution of the export/sales ratio.

We investigate the convergence process among EU regions between 1980-2002 taking into account the effects of spatial heterogeneity and spatial spillover effects. The spatial regimes model allows for different steady-state growth paths. In contrast to previous analyses, the regimes in this paper...